


The Sisters of the Little Kindness

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Cunnilingus, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, On the Run, Post-Order 66, Touch-Starved, Vaginal Fingering, Ventress Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-24 12:53:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14355939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Ahsoka isn't alone as she goes into hiding.





	The Sisters of the Little Kindness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> Contains some background material from the Ahsoka novel.

It's been two days since Ahsoka slept. She's been running since Mandalore: running away from her former friends who now hunt anyone who ever was a Jedi, running towards the only real home she's ever had. Obi-Wan is there, must be there. Anakin will return to Coruscant. Ahsoka has no room in her head for wondering if either or both are dead. They can't be dead. She will return home and meet them there, and together the three of them will sort out the horror of this tragedy. The deaths of other friends reverberate through her but Obi-Wan has sent a message calling the remaining Jedi home.

Her ship drops out of hyperspace above Coruscant. She's been using a false name for the last half year, and the name is enough to give her landing coordinates. Safely docked, she heads towards the Temple when the message changes abruptly.

 _"This message is a warning,"_ says Master Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka's face can't disguise her horror. She is in the heart of enemy territory, and the one person she was sure would meet her here is warning her away.

A hand clamps on her shoulder, and she whirls to face her attacker, wondering if she can make herself kill someone who shares a face with her dearest friends.

It's not a clone. She knows Ventress under her hood instantly. "Hurry," Ventress tells her, shoving Ahsoka in the direction away from the Temple but at an angle. They are two cloaked figures who are neither fleeing the direction of the Jedi Temple nor running towards it, merely hurrying along on their own business.

"Talk with me," Ventress tells her. "We should appear casual."

"I heard you were dead," Ahsoka says. It's not the wittiest of banter but she's tired.

"I heard all of you Jedi were dead. Rumors are often wrong."

"I'm no Jedi." The words hurt. This isn't the first time she's spoken them out loud and it won't be the last.

"Nor am I. They won't care about the difference." Ventress nods absently at a pair of clone troopers who stand guard outside a municipal building. The clones haven't spotted them, or else the shooting would have already begun.

Ventress doesn't live where she used to. She takes Ahsoka, unasked, to a hideout Ahsoka only knows is lived-in by the pile of blankets in one corner. Her first instinct is to insult the shabby room. How low her enemy has fallen, or something. Instead she sinks down to the floor against one wall.

"Thank you."

"If anyone gets to lop off your foolish head, it's going to be me, not some vat-grown imbecile."

Ahsoka is instantly back on her guard. This is Asajj Ventress, not one of her friends. They've worked together before, and they've tried to kill each other before. She may have brought Ahsoka into her lair to kill her in private. Ahsoka must stay awake, must stay alert.

* * *

Her eyes blink open as she startles awake. Ventress sits close to her, her strange eyes boring into Ahsoka.

Stupid. So stupid. She should never have fallen asleep here. But Ventress hasn't tried to kill her, hasn't disturbed her at all. She's merely sitting very close. Their hands nearly touch. Ventress looks down and sees this, and she retreats into a defensive position.

"Sleep well?" she asks in a mocking tone.

"How long was I out?"

"A few hours."

Hours alone with someone who'd slaughtered more powerful Jedi for less reason, and all Ahsoka has to show for the danger is a stiff neck from where she rested against the cold wall.

"I can't give you anything," she says at last. "I don't have any money. I don't have access to anything inside the Temple. If you turn me in for the reward, they'll kill you."

Ventress shrugs, a strange, elegant move from her long limbs, then she gestures. "There's food."

Ahsoka's stomach urges her attention. She gets to her feet and makes her way to the packets on what passes for a table. None of these will keep her fed, but they'll ease one pain until she can find better food. Even in her dreams, she felt more of her old comrades fall. That pain will linger for as long as she lives, assuming she even survives the rest of today.

"Why are you helping me?"

Ventress doesn't speak for a while. She snatches up a packet and tears off the covering, breaking the wafer inside into pieces and chewing each one: an old spacer's trick to make the food seem to last longer.

"I was a Jedi for a while," she says at last when all the crumbs have been licked from her fingers. "The order the clones were given includes all Jedi, no matter how far removed from the Order. You'll be hunted and so will I. You're good in a fight. I'd rather have you fighting beside me than dying uselessly. I'll stay alive longer."

"I didn't expect it was from altruism," Ahsoka says with a sad smile as she eats the last of her own scanty meal. "I can't stay. I have to find Anakin and Obi-Wan. Thank you all the same."

"You know they're dead. If you go after them, you'll die as well. We should get out of here."

"They're not dead." She would know. She would have felt them die.

"Then they'll have gone to ground and they'll assume you've done the same. You won't find them here."

She knows Ventress is right. She left Rex back on Mandalore, his own death faked via a brother who'd attempted to kill her. He'll infiltrate the ranks but she won't be able to talk with him. Anakin and Obi-Wan have no means to know he won't turn on them, too.

She's alone.

Ahsoka sinks down to the ground as the understand finally hits her through the numb cloud of denial she's worn since the sad echoes began. She is alone and she will be alone, hunted and hated. Her only ally is a woman who has murdered others Ahsoka knew and cared for, and who has little reason to want Ahsoka alive. The rations in her stomach gurgle and she wills herself to calm.

When she's found her center, she looks up. Ventress hasn't moved, watching her turmoil impassively.

"I have a ship."

"If they've traced it to you, you're better off with a new one."

Ahsoka is determined to return to her own stolen ship before she makes off with another. Reluctantly, Ventress follows her to the dock. The ship is crawling with clones looking for clues to the thief's identity. "It's been listed as stolen," Ahsoka says. She wiped the consoles down before she left just in case, and it isn't as though she dropped hair follicles for them to examine. They may guess at her identity but they can't know for sure.

Ventress drags her away from this port. There's another port five streets away. Ahsoka selects a small cargo shuttle that looks promising. She uses the Force to override the locks after Ventress disables the security feeds. Then it's a matter of splicing circuits to bypass the command code. Anakin taught her how to do this during her first week as his padawan while Obi-Wan tutted at them both, at Anakin for teaching her how to commit grand theft spacecraft and at Ahsoka for being so obviously pleased to learn the trick.

They can't be dead.

The new ship handles like a flying brick: plenty of heft but no grace. Ahsoka can't breathe as they ascend, expecting any moment for the defense canons to open fire, for interceptor ships to swarm them, for hot blasts to send them spiraling to join the rest of the Jedi and the would-be-Jedi and the once-were-Jedi in the Force. She punches into hyperspace the moment they're free of the atmosphere.

"Where are you sending us?"

She doesn't know. She programmed in Shili as their destination though it's no safer there than Coruscant. Should Ahsoka be suspected to live, they'll follow her to her homeworld. Dathomir is equally dangerous.

"I don't know. I need to...." She hesitates. There's no way to contact any survivors. She needs to gather them and she has no means to do so. "I don't know," she repeats.

Ventress checks their fuel. "We can reach the Outer Rim, barely."

"Pick a destination."

"You trust me?" Her face is curious, probing.

"No. Does it matter?"

Ventress gives her another inscrutable shrug, then sets the course.

* * *

They sell the ship on a backwater planet where the locals are only too happy not to ask questions. The ship's cargo is fresh fruit, as it turns out, and selling what they won't eat puts more credits in their hands.

"Sisters," Ahsoka says when someone asks, and at their speculative confusion, she adds, "By marriage. Asa is my brother's widow." The war was hard on everyone, she gets as reply, and no further questions.

Ventress balks at the story when they are alone but she has no better suggestions. On this planet, they are sisters looking to purchase a much smaller craft, faster. "We need to get out and stay under cover. Don't make friends."

* * *

Their new ship gets them to a new planet, and Ventress is the first to be asked why they are traveling together. "Sisters," she says. "We are initiates in a religious order. Would you like to read some tracts about our gods?"

Ahsoka can't stop her giggles when they're finally alone. "Religious order? What would you have done if they'd wanted to hear more?"

"The best way to get someone to leave you in peace is to convince them they want to be somewhere else. No one cares to hear about someone else's gods."

It's good advice. Ventress has been full of strange sayings that sound like a chalky, broken sort of wisdom. They don't sound like something Dooku would have taught her.

"Tell me about your master," she says as they each shiver in their own blanket on a chilly night. "Narec, I mean."

"He was a good person. He died. There's nothing else to tell." She rolls over.

"He taught you so much. What was he like?"

"Kind." It's a strange word to hear from Ventress, as strange as trusting her own safety to her every night.

"Do you think your life would have been different if he'd lived?"

"I try not think about it at all. The past is dead, little Jedi. All we can ever do is deal with the corpse."

* * *

Sisters, Ahsoka tells the curious on the next world, and she doesn't explain. She is a tinkerer. Ventress can do odd jobs and hasn't killed anyone since they've been on the run together. They scrape together enough credits to feed themselves and keep fuel in the ship in case they need to leave in a hurry. 

Ahsoka likes this rural world, tilled fields stretching out in all directions. She knows they can't stay forever, but she'd like to stay for as long as they can. In the evenings, with a mutual reluctance, Ventress is teaching her from her own cracked memories of Jedi training. Ahsoka offers what lessons she's had. Ahsoka is not a Jedi, and neither is Ventress, but knowledge is precious now. What they share between them may be the last drops in the desert.

"Tell me about the Nightsisters."

"No."

They spar, because Ventress is very good at fighting. They meditate, because Ventress is very bad at calm and Ahsoka believes they'll both be safer if she learns it.

They leave the planet the night after stormtroopers arrive. If the populace is found to be harboring criminals like them, they'll be punished harshly. If two drifters wander away, no one will care.

* * *

"Religious order," Ventress says at their next home. Ahsoka wants to set up shop, but she's weak. The ship took them far from their last port, but neither had thought to pack the rations she needs for a longer trip. She hasn't eaten real protein in too many days.

"See what you can purchase," she tells Ventress. They don't have many credits left. If her former enemy wants her dead, starvation is a particularly nasty way of exacting whatever revenge her mind tells her that she needs.

Dizziness sends her to sleep, passed out in the shadow beside the ship. When she wakes, there's a tantalizing smell in the air. Her eyes focus on the small firepit someone has dug not far from where she's sleeping. Something is roasting over it, something that smells delicious.

"I caught it," Ventress tells her, shoving a stick holding hot meat into Ahsoka's grasp. "Don't ask me what it's called."

Later, she will learn the creatures are considered pests, constantly getting into the grain stores of the local farmers. Tonight, she eats what she's given, and is grateful. Unbidden, Ventress sits next to her, and to Ahsoka's surprise, wraps the blanket around them both.

"When you're feeling better, you can show me that mind trick again."

"I will."

They are touching side to side, and suddenly Ahsoka is acutely aware of how long it's been since she touched anyone, since she idly held hands with a friend, or hugged someone. The food warms her inside but her heart is heavy, and tears threaten as she finishes her meal. 

"It's bad, isn't it?" Ventress asks.

"No. It was delicious." Aching and sad, she rests her body closer to Ventress, taking in her warmth. "Asajj, thank you. For everything."

There's a sudden gasp, light and surprised. Then she feels the tentative pressure of their arms touching, and the gentle touch of a head resting against hers.

* * *

They are sisters on this world, and the only room they can rent has but one bed. This is no problem for actual sisters, and it's nice to feel someone warm beside her at night.

"Tell me about Hal'Sted."

"Why do you want to know?"

The room is dark. Ahsoka can see the glint of annoyance in Asajj's eyes. "I want to know more about you."

"You are asking the wrong thing. Ask me about me, not about the people I knew."

"The people around us make us who we are."

"Wrong. We make ourselves who we are. Other people only cause problems along the way."

"If I'm such a problem, why did you bring me along with you?"

There's no answer. Ahsoka eventually falls asleep, and wakes to see Asajj watching her.

"What?"

"Nothing. You were dreaming loudly."

Ahsoka smirks in the darkness. She remembers the dream she was having. "You can hear my dreams?"

"Tomorrow we'll work on shielding. Your mind is always loud. You'll call a Sith Lord down on us if you're not careful."

In the morning, Asajj has already left for work by the time Ahsoka is awake. No lessons before work, then. She returned to the same dream after she fell back asleep: tangled in sweaty embrace with an unseen lover. Perhaps it's making Asajj uncomfortable.

She doesn't return until late evening. Ahsoka says, "I'm sorry if I upset you."

"You didn't. I had work to do." She shows Ahsoka the extra credits she picked up today. Ahsoka doesn't ask what she did to earn them. This is a new galaxy with new rules. She's asked Asajj not to kill anyone. She's not sure what she'll do if she finds out that one rule has been broken.

"We should move on soon," Asajj says as she eats her dinner. "I have a bad feeling about this world."

"Are we going to keep running forever?" Despair creeps in. She's been hoping they will find a place to stay and begin the much larger task before them. The Republic has been usurped into a vicious Empire. Someone must fight back. Two not-Jedi might be what the galaxy needs.

They've had this conversation before. They don't need to retread most of it. "The Empire has already won. The Jedi are dead. We're alive. The only way to stay alive is to keep hidden as long as we can."

"I can't keep hiding for the rest of my life."

"It will be the rest of your life once they find your hiding place. What you're proposing is madness. Worse, it's pointless. We can't fight them."

"We can try."

There's more, but it's become an old argument. They won't find answers tonight. Ahsoka wants to push. She wants to win. Asajj just wants to survive.

"Why won't you see that we need to fight?"

"Why must you be so frustrating? We cannot fight."

Unhappy, they get ready for bed. No lessons at all tonight, and soon, Ahsoka is back in a dream. This is as powerful as last night's dream, and she is aware she is dreaming as warm lips meet hers. She can't change the shapes of her own dreams.

Her eyes open. Asajj is watching her again, mouth so close to hers Ahsoka can taste her breath.

Without thinking, Ahsoka closes the gap and kisses her. A gasp startles into her mouth. She pulls away. "Sorry," she says. "I'm sorry. I was still asleep." It's a tender lie, easier than the complicated truth.

"Is that the lie a Jedi tells herself?" Her voice is mocking, and her eyes are the only light in this room.

"I'm not a Jedi."

"Then why lie about what you want?" The second kiss should surprise her, but doesn't. Asajj is demanding and desperate, and Ahsoka feels her tremble as she touches her shoulders, as if the skin of hands and arms is even more intimate than lips.

'Want' has always been a difficult concept. She's been taught from her earliest years to first accept and then relinquish her own needs as payment for tranquility, push past desire to touch and feel for the sake of perfect control, surrender the notion of love in exchange for balance. This is the Jedi way. The Order is gone, and Ahsoka walked away on her own two feet before it fell. A new way must be found, and she has wanted this for weeks, months, perhaps since before she knew what desire was.

It seems the desire has not been hers alone.

With a boldness she's never let herself know before now, she grasps Asajj's thin, strong neck and drags her closer. If she's to give in to want, Ahsoka certainly has no use for being some passive flower delicately opened, and Asajj is too soaked in old violence to know how to coax someone gently through this now. Ahsoka presses into her, tasting her kisses like new wine, her head swooning. Asajj watches her with open eyes, caught between guarded suspicion and flickers of genuine hope.

They tangle together this way for a long time, learning the nips of teeth against tongue and lip. Ahsoka strokes the tender skin of Asajj's throat, and feels a warm, curious hand stroke a shivery path from the tip of one montral down the length of her sensitive lek. It's new, and fascinating, as Ahsoka explores the effect of her sharp nails drawn smoothly down the length of one arm before dancing against the ticklish skin of Asajj's palm. She's never done this, but she's wondered, spending lonely nights with her own confused fantasies even before she left the Order. Her dreams aren't sown from experience. She would like to sow new ones with experiments.

It's nothing to get Asajj's shirt off her body, not with her helping between rough kisses, and now the pale expanse of her skin is open to Ahsoka's view. She traces the dark markings she finds with her fingertips, following lines over the curve of a side, pausing to admire the petite swell of her breasts. With a cautious delight, Ahsoka presses one hand against the budding warmth, pressing her mouth to Asajj's lips as she does and drinking in the pleased noises she makes.

The experiments are going well so far.

She rolls atop Asajj with a wicked grin. "Show me how to touch you."

Asajj takes her free hand and brings it between them. She kisses the skin at Ahsoka's knuckles, sending fire to race in her belly as she turns and licks a wet strike down Ahsoka's palm. Asajj drags her hand down under the waistband of the trousers she wears against the cold of this planet's climate. Ahsoka finds only warmth against her fingers, as Asajj coaxes her where she wants her.

This is familiar, as much as it can be. Her hand has gone between her own thighs this way, lost in ache and need. Now a feeling of power rushes through her unlike the flow of the Force. Her hand finds the needy place Asajj wants her to touch, wet and ready. Without sight, Ahsoka can only rely on the way Asajj gasps and writhes. Pleasure writes itself across her face as Ahsoka strokes and swirls the tips of her fingers against her, and her hips move in an erratic rhythm.

Ahsoka pulls her hand away, bringing it between them again as she licks the sweet-salt of Asajj's need from each digit. She slides the third finger into Asajj's mouth, then kisses away the taste with a pleased groan.

"Can I taste you for real?"

Asajj can't speak, but Ahsoka feels a surge of hot desire inside her mind, a strange but not unwelcome intrusion. Some Jedi can communicate through the Force. Asajj is communicating that she would very much enjoy Ahsoka's tongue to finish her hand's work.

The trousers slide off with scarcely more difficulty than her shirt. The long, lean frame almost glows in the dim room, a beacon Ahsoka has been trying to ignore for weeks, months, a lifetime. She takes a moment to enjoy this. She has a lover. This is the most amazing thing in the galaxy.

"Well?" Asajj demands. "Aren't you going to get on with it?"

"Only if you're good." Her hand slides up one thigh, and her lips trace the same path after. The skin here is damp with sweat, smelling richly of promise. Ahsoka breathes lightly against the sensitive flesh in the delta between Asajj's legs. Colors are hard to make out in the darkness, and it's impossible to see if she is the same deathly pale, or if the skin colors to barely pink. Ahsoka wants to spread her out this way under candlelight, torchlight, glarelight, sunlight. She takes a long, slow lick, feasting on each small ridge, savoring the rich flavor. Now she can see the simple textures, the pattern of engorged flesh folding inward, until her nose pushes in to unwrap the prize underneath. The bump is small, much smaller than the equivalent between her own legs, familiar to her own hands. She presses a kiss to it nonetheless and Asajj whines.

"Pressure," she manages to gasp. "Harder."

Ahsoka doesn't mind the instruction. She dips in with her tongue, pushing against the tiny bump with firm, wet strokes again and again. She's rewarded with a hot moan, which increases in pitch and volume as Ahsoka licks her harder.

Her fingers busy themselves, first holding open Asajj's tender folds, then exploring the hot, tight entrance right beneath. In her furtive explorations of sexuality, she's watched lovers embrace much this way, until one thrusts deeply inside to complete the mating. It's common enough among species to make her consider Dathomirians probably have a similar ritual. She pushes the tip of one finger into the clenching, slick heat. Asajj immediately grabs her wrist, but instead of pulling her hand away, she forces it up. Ahsoka crooks her finger, stroking the eager flesh inside as her mouth learns the best strokes to force those wonderful cries from Asajj's throat.

The highest praise Asajj can give about anyone is that they are kind. Ahsoka has the feeling not many people have been kind to her in her whole life, and she makes a pact with herself to change that. Ahsoka has room for kindness.

She also really wants to get off.

She's ambidextrous, but she's not good at splitting her focus. Otherwise her other hand would be between her own legs now. She's drunk on the smell and taste and feel, close to the edge herself merely by sensing what pleasure she's bringing to this woman. She feels the sparks shooting through Asajj as her body ripples, clenching around her finger hard in her throes.

The power she feels is amazing. It makes up for the powerlessness that hist her when she goes to withdraw her hand and discovers she's clamped into place. Asajj is still enjoying the quakes from her climax. Ahsoka is worried about the circulation in her fingers.

After a minute, Asajj glints at her in the darkness, mirth in her eyes. "The muscles are involuntary. They hold in place for some time after mating. It ensures successful fertilization."

Ahsoka glances at her hand, and back at Asajj. "You could have said."

She leans back on her thin pillow. "I didn't tell you to put your hand in there."

"You seemed to like it."

"I did. How flexible are you?"

"Enough."

"Good. Swing yourself around. I have an idea to help us pass the time." She takes hold of Ahsoka's waist, and plucks at her sleeping clothes. If they move in the right direction together, Ahsoka can position her body for Asajj to reciprocate, which Ahsoka is very eager for. And they do have some time to kill.

"Show me."

Angles are strange, and Ahsoka nearly kicks her in the face as she attempts to disrobe with one hand. Asajj twists and turns until she presses her mouth to the aching place between Ahsoka's legs. Warmth floods her then, overcome with the new sensations. This is nothing like her own furtive manipulations, nothing like her filthy dreams. Each curious exploration shoots fire up her nerves as Asajj learns her and tastes her. Ahsoka tries to keep herself controlled. A Jedi, even a former one, should control this trembling through her body as Asajj pushes her harder, her lips humming with some private song.

Ahsoka whispers a swear in a language she's not supposed to know as she surges over the edge. Her fingers slide free from their trap. She pulls herself away, panting and pleased, before crawling atop her new lover and diving in with a deep kiss.

"More," she gasps into Asajj's mouth, and they tumble together beneath the thin blankets, offering the sweet kindness the night can provide them.


End file.
